April StoryFolklore data of Kagoshima Japan


Rice planting of a sand hill

A Bansei and Kominato are sand hill zones. There is fields. People conquered serious difficulties and have continued agricultural work.


A scallion cooking man in KominatoI came to Kaseda in 1992. Then, I was surprised that the house, the grave, and the rice field are built on sand at Bansei or Kominato.

In Okayama where I grew up, rice seedlings are transplanted at the consecutive holidays in May. In Kochi where I passed the student time, there are many early rice crops. And people transplant rice seedlings on the spring vacation in March and April. In there, they set up many scarecrows in July. And the people there reap at the summer vacation. It is Showa 28 that this early rice crop was introduced into Kaseda.

The farmers are busy in spring. They make a seed bed, cultivate the fields, and set out rice plants. However, now, they can buy a seedling from an agricultural cooperative association. Moreover, they can use various machines. Cultivating using a horse started in Meiji 19 in Kaseda. Next, farmers used the cow. And people began to use the machine to cultivate from the Showa 30s.

Well, the sand hill farmland in Kaseda was a former site of a Bansei airfield, puts in clay from other areas and was made, after the war. The war repatriate and the local farmhouse reclaimed this farmland. Here, if people pierce pipe into the ground, people can lead water easily. It means that it is the bad land of drainage.

The new rice field was completed on the west of the Bansei junior high school in 1996. An irrigation canal and a drainage canal are made in this rice field. And people are transplanting rice seedlings in this new rice field this month. They say, "Remaking the land fertilized many years also has uneasiness." However, they are always accepting the new technology of the agricultural work. And fields have always also been improved.


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